Every American school child is familiar with the word democracy. He has heard the soap-box orator or the high-hatted candidate for city sewerage service or for some of the more elevated municipal positions fall back on the grand old word when others failed to flow. Later, this Sunday school teacher related the blessings enjoyed by fortunate souls living in this earthly paradise where every man is free and equal. His first grammar class in public school convinced him that the noun was derived from the Greek word demokratia, "demos" meaning people, and "krateo" meaning rule, the combination having the literal meaning of government of the people. Yes, every American school child is quite familiar with the noun and its significance to every American citizen.

Last August, three democratic election judges in Hampton, Va., lost sight of the fact that their party, like every other American political party, guaranteed government, directly, by the people collectively and so those gentlemen refused to allow Mr. L. E. Wilson to cast his vote in the State primaries because this citizen was a Negro. Mr. Wilson, a staunch, old democrat, secretary of the Building and Loan Association, in Hampton, Va., and an active civic worker, resented this treatment and sued the judges for ten thousand dollars. A jury, during the October term of the county circuit court, decided in favor of the election judges, that "only white citizens could vote in the democratic primaries". On Armistice Day, last Saturday, Judge C. Vernon Spratley of the Elizabeth City County Circuit Court over-ruled the jury's decision and held that no party could, in a State conducted primary, make lawful discrimination because of race, color or previous condition of servitude.

Judge Spratley's ruling will be lauded by ALL lovers of true democracy, for it is a fact that cannot be disregarded. Virginia Negroes are citizens of the State and, as such, enjoy the right to share the duties and responsibilities of American citizens. In a land that so religiously guarantees "Government of the people, for the people and by the people" and based on the principle of democracy, differentiation rules that are applied to some and denied others cannot be made.